SCENE STEALER: 'The Mist'

Ralph Nelson / The Weinstein Company

By Ron Magid, Special to The Times When director Frank Darabont needed sentient fog to star in his latest Stephen King adaptation, he didn't rely on high-tech visual effects. Instead, he called his longtime special-effects coordinator, Darrell Pritchett ("The Green Mile," "The Majestic"), and asked him to figure out a way to wrangle some actual ethereal condensation for "The Mist." "This was not an expensive movie, so everything we could do practically was definitely a bonus," Pritchett says. Although visual effects are generally executed after production has wrapped, special effects must be achieved on set, often while crew and actors wait. Pritchett has made a career of making real-world elements do the impossible on cue, supplying such events as natural disaster -- rain, wind, snow, fire -- and war on demand. He and his handpicked crew have traveled the world wreaking havoc, "but only on film!" he says.

By Ron Magid, Special to The Times When director Frank Darabont needed sentient fog to star in his latest Stephen King adaptation, he didn't rely on high-tech visual effects. Instead, he called his longtime special-effects coordinator, Darrell Pritchett ("The Green Mile," "The Majestic"), and asked him to figure out a way to wrangle some actual ethereal condensation for "The Mist." "This was not an expensive movie, so everything we could do practically was definitely a bonus," Pritchett says. Although visual effects are generally executed after production has wrapped, special effects must be achieved on set, often while crew and actors wait. Pritchett has made a career of making real-world elements do the impossible on cue, supplying such events as natural disaster -- rain, wind, snow, fire -- and war on demand. He and his handpicked crew have traveled the world wreaking havoc, "but only on film!" he says. (Ralph Nelson / The Weinstein Company)

Conjuring Darabont's "Mist" meant brewing a miasma that was actually the title character of the film, and making it work in three different environments. To do that, Pritchett cornered the market on fog juice -- the chemical cocktail that, when mixed with water, clouds the air. "I don't know how many hundreds of gallons we used," he says. "The mist comes in early on and stays throughout." For one nail-biting sequence, Darabont wanted the creature-laden fog to congeal by a loading dock door and then stop dead. The pressure was intense as Pritchett's crew got on set three days before the shoot, and pressure is what they figured would do the trick. Forcing air into the sealed set increased the pressure just enough to halt the vapor (CO2 mixed with fog juice) on cue. "It was trial and error," Pritchett says. "If it didn't work, I was in big trouble."

Conjuring Darabont's "Mist" meant brewing a miasma that was actually the title character of the film, and making it work in three different environments. To do that, Pritchett cornered the market on fog juice -- the chemical cocktail that, when mixed with water, clouds the air. "I don't know how many hundreds of gallons we used," he says. "The mist comes in early on and stays throughout." For one nail-biting sequence, Darabont wanted the creature-laden fog to congeal by a loading dock door and then stop dead. The pressure was intense as Pritchett's crew got on set three days before the shoot, and pressure is what they figured would do the trick. Forcing air into the sealed set increased the pressure just enough to halt the vapor (CO2 mixed with fog juice) on cue. "It was trial and error," Pritchett says. "If it didn't work, I was in big trouble." (Krause, Johansen /)